Early web benchmarks for the Galaxy Nexus show that the flagship smartphone outperforms Apple's iPhone 4S in some areas, while Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been spotted picking up a copy of the Galaxy Nexus at Google's headquarters.

After the Galaxy Nexus went on sale in the U.K. earlier this week, Anandtech obtained the results of several tests on the device. The smartphone, the result of a partnership between Google and Samsung, bested the iPhone 4S on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark and the Rightware BrowserMark.

Google has packed the Galaxy Nexus with the Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 processor and the Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX 540 GPU. According to the report, its CPUs are clocked "noticeably higher" than the iPhone 4S' own 800 MHz processors.

Apple's latest smartphone did outperform the Galaxy Nexus in the graphics department, however, as evidenced by the GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt and Pro tests. The iPhone 4S makes use of the A5 processor, which makes use of the dual-core SGX 543MP2 GPU from Imagination Technologies.

"Google really pushed the performance of its software further with Ice Cream Sandwich, while GPU performance is limited by the SGX 540. The good news is that there's more than enough hardware at ICS' disposal to deliver a smooth experience," the report concluded.

Google and Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Nexus and the upcoming Android 4.0 update, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, at a press event in Hong Kong last month. A U.S. launch for the device was slated for late this month, though recent speculation suggest that it has been pushed back to December.

MacNN reports that some early adopters of the Galaxy Nexus are have encountered a volume bug with the device. Users have nicknamed it the "Self Aware Volume Ghost," as the flaw is said to randomly lower volume on the handset and sometimes prevent users from turning it back up.

It's possible that the bug has contributed to delays of the device. Wireless operator Vodafone said on Saturday that it is "continuing to test" the handset's firmware and plans to release the phone once tests are complete.

The Woz

The Galaxy Nexus hasn't arrived in the U.S. yet, but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, also known as "Woz," has already got his hands on one. Android browser engineer Nicolas Roard reported via Google+ that Wozniak had been spotted picking up the device on the campus of Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

According to MacNN, Wozniak was invited to pick up the device after he posted on Twitter that he was looking for it at Best Buy. Recent rumors suggest that Verizon will launch the Galaxy Nexus on Dec. 8.

Though he has expressed a growing interest in the Android platform, Wozniak also remains an avid iPhone user. Last month, he was first in line to purchase the iPhone 4S at an Apple Store in Los Gatos, Calif. Unlike with his recent Galaxy Nexus acquisition, Wozniak said that he wanted to get the iPhone 4S at the same time as other enthusiasts.

"I want to get mine along with the millions of other fans," Wozniak told CNN while waiting in line. "I just want to be able to talk to my phone."

In fact, Wozniak has admitted that his keen interest in cell phones sometimes leads him to carry as many as 10 different phones with him.

Friend of mine have one of those. Nice phone, unfortunately you pay the price for faster CPU and slimmer (and noticeably lighter) design. In this case, price is battery life. Unless you spend the whole day close to charging port, you may not be too happy with this phone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sranger

I really like The Galaxy Nexus. It looks like it will be my next phone....

Too bad the 4s was not 4G... That and a few other things were the deciding factors for me...

If we get more "nexus" like android device then Apple will really need to come up with something amazing for their next phone. This is really starting to look good. I think for now I will go with a Galaxy Nexus and maybe next year depending on how the T-Mobile+AT&T merger ends I will go to the iPhone. (I have conflicting interest in both companies , )

Android is going to push Apple to accelerate development of future iPhones. I've used both and my personal preference is iPhone. However, competition is a win for consumers. It forces companies to innovate and keeps prices in line. This is why I'm against AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile. I ran into Woz at the Apple Store Valley Fair Mall a few years ago. We chatted for a few minutes. Super-nice guy.

Android is going to push Apple to accelerate development of future iPhones. I've used both and my personal preference is iPhone. However, competition is a win for consumers. It forces companies to innovate and keeps prices in line. This is why I'm against AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile. I ran into Woz at the Apple Store Valley Fair Mall a few years ago. We chatted for a few minutes. Super-nice guy.

Only tech geeks are concerned with tech specs. It's the experience that counts. I don't know about anybody complaining that the iPhone 4S is slow.

Apple has designed the iPhone4S around their own iOS. What does it matter that the other phone has a faster chip or more memory? It probably needs it to run the latest Android OS smoothly. In the end, tech specs don't matter. What matters is the experience of using the phone is smooth and seamless.

Friend of mine have one of those. Nice phone, unfortunately you pay the price for faster CPU and slimmer (and noticeably lighter) design. In this case, price is battery life. Unless you spend the whole day close to charging port, you may not be too happy with this phone.

As opposed to the 4S, which is clearly doing very well with battery life. 5.01 was supposed to address it and made things worse for some and now they are working on 5.02 for battery life. I know some will say they have no issues, but I know an equal amount who have terrible life, including me.

When I was young and subject to hormone-induced stupidity, having my car do 0 to 60 in 4 seconds was important, as well was hitting 100 mph on some rural road. Luckily I lived to grow up, unlike some other local kids who didn't.

There are times when speed is important, and more times when increasing speed has no computational importance.

There is no good reason to hide an increase in speed, but knowing the trade-offs to gain that speed is critical.

Only tech geeks are concerned with tech specs. It's the experience that counts. I don't know about anybody complaining that the iPhone 4S is slow.

Apple has designed the iPhone4S around their own iOS. What does it matter that the other phone has a faster chip or more memory? It probably needs it to run the latest Android OS smoothly. In the end, tech specs don't matter. What matters is the experience of using the phone is smooth and seamless.

Josh Topolsky at the Verge has a pretty thorough review up. In his wrap up he says:

"The Galaxy Nexus is the best Android phone ever made. It's one of the best smartphones ever made, and with a couple of minor tweaks (particularly to the camera), it could be the best smartphone ever produced.

Still, there's really not much to knock here. The hardware is elegant and smartly designed. The software is beautiful and useful. Google has cleaned up a lot of the bad, and replaced it with a serious amount of good. It's faster, smarter, and a lot more friendly than any of its predecessors. Ice Cream Sandwich easily gives iOS and Windows Phone a run for their money, and in many ways, it's a superior operating system than either of them.

This is from a phone that isn't intended to be top dawg. The Nexus smartphones aren't designed with the best available hardware intentionally. They're instead meant as reference devices for the other Android manufacturers as they finalize the phones designed with ICS in mind releasing this next quarter.

As opposed to the 4S, which is clearly doing very well with battery life. 5.01 was supposed to address it and made things worse for some and now they are working on 5.02 for battery life. I know some will say they have no issues, but I know an equal amount who have terrible life, including me.

my battery life sucked too!!! I turned off the location service for time zone and my battery now last all day.

Yes because no OS can possibly change. If an OS has issues at launch they can never be fixed. they will always be there. That is why iOS does not have tethering, multitasking, MMS, installable apps, facetime, icloud, ibooks, and the notifications are the same. Yep you can never improve an OS.

Get the point, OSs change and you have to approach each release as a fresh mindset. Although it is hard to let go of the past let downs but it is not possible. Android 4.0 does not equal the past release and should not be treated as such. Android is still a popular OS and millions of people are choosing and enjoying it.

If we get more "nexus" like android device then Apple will really need to come up with something amazing for their next phone. This is really starting to look good. I think for now I will go with a Galaxy Nexus and maybe next year depending on how the T-Mobile+AT&T merger ends I will go to the iPhone. (I have conflicting interest in both companies , )

It still runs android. I don't see what's good about it. All core problems are still there.

You do realize he is still one of the most recognized faces in the information technology sector. In fact, we have a street in San Jose named for Woz.

Wozniak co-founded Wheels of Zeus, a wireless GPS technology company (now defunct)
Board of Directors of Ripcord Networks, Inc.
Board of Directors of Danger, Inc.
Wozniak founded Acquicor Technology, a holding company for technology companies
Wozniak is currently the chief scientist for Fusion-io

Recently, Wozniak delivered the keynote presentation at IP EXPO at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London as well as the keynote at "Rutgers Entrepreneurship Day" at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Its sad to Woz get caught getting a Nexus if Steve was around he probably would of thought twice perhaps this a sign of things to come from Apple not good.. and to be honest I actually like the new Nexus.

The Android camp keeps throwing everything they've got at the 4S and they still can't bump it off its perch. Hell, they can't even bump the 4 off its perch.

So, what's going to happen in 2012 when the totally redesigned v6 iPhone goes on sale and the 4S and 4 get bumped down into the $99 and $49 (or less) price points. I'll guarantee an average of 30 million iPhones per quarter over 4 quarters for Apple while Samsung hits a wall.

So keep throwing those specs out there guys... it won't mean a damn thing a year from now. Actually, anyone with any sense can see it doesn't mean a damn thing now.

I wouldn't say that - I have no doubt that Android is very high quality spyware. If you don't mind Google knowing everything about you and selling your soul to advertisers, then Android is for you.
As for myself, I plan on staying as far away from Google's evil as I can.

Back to the topic of the article, I don't get the Nexus hype. The Nexus is only 1.12x to 1.2x faster in CPU tasks, which nobody will even be able to notice without running some type of spec diagnostic on it, yet the 4S is 2.5x to 2.7x faster in GPU tasks, which should be extremely noticeable.

The peculiar thing about the CPU benchmarks is that they are both based on dual core ARM Corete-A9, but the Nexus operates at 1.5x the clock rate of the 4S yet achieves only 1.12x to 1.2x the performance (according to these specs). If true, something else in the Nexus hardware or in Android is really dogging it down. Given the dramatically higher clock rate of the Nexus, one would expect it to have noticeably shorter battery life. (But of course the 4S has some yet-to-be-overcome battery issues of its own that may negate its efficiency advantage.)

Given that the A5 in the iPad2 has 1.25x the clock rate of the 4S and given the commensurate GPU performance advantage over the 4S as shown, I wonder what its CPU numbers would look like compared to the 4S & Nexus? I rather suspect it would be on par even though the Nexus still has 1.2x the clock rate of the iPad. All the more remarkable given that the Nexus has 2x the RAM of the iPhone & the iPad.

More to come I'm sure, but taken at face value this spec report does not look like an endorsement of either the Galaxy Nexus or the OMAP 4460 powering it. Given the strong similarities in the hardware other than the clock rates, RAM, & GPU architectures, I'm inclined to think this indicates that Android is much less efficient than iOS.
At least as far as user performance is concerned. I'm quite confident that Android is the more efficient spyware for its masters.

...and that would be important if if they were using the same processor, but they aren't.

-kpluck

Given that they are both based on the dual core ARM Coretex-A9, yes it is significant. Still not one-to-one comparable designs to be sure, but relative clock rate is definitely a major factor. Note that the Galaxy Nexus spec page lists its clock rate as 1.2GHz, or 1.5x the 800MHz of the 4S. The difference in the spec numbers should have been much greater.

While the benchmark performance is considerable it isn't relevant for most users since Android still has the same core issues. Until the issues are resolved, Android isn't a mobile OS for the masses despite being the most widely deployed OS. Most of these issues are related to the same single problem:

Battery life (caused by many of the issues listed below)
Bloatware
Cross-platform fertilization
Differentiation (or lack of for the ODMs)
Ecosystem (relative lack of a good ecosystem)
Flawed business model
Fragmentation
Multi-tasking (poor implementation most users don't understand)
Security
Technology for the sake of technology (rather than actual user demand or need)
User Experience

Google's business model will lead to Android being the leading smartphone OS by market share but will concede profit share to Apple. In fact, we already see this trend so this shouldn't surprise anyone. While Microsoft's model lead to runaway success, Microsoft has failed to innovate in many markets which will eventually occur to Google Android. Unfortunately for Google they will not concede and will continue to bleed money from Android for many years.

No offense to AI, but I don't have a clue what those benchmark numbers even mean.

I want to know how it performs. How will it feel in my hand? Does it have artificial intelligence? A vibrant app store? How about music and magazines? How well does it integrate with the cloud? Is the screen as beautiful as it is big? Does the camera system deliver beautiful photos?

I'm sure a benchmark of 9895757893838 kicks ass, but to me it seems to be a waste of reporting because the consumer walks away without learning anything relevant.

I'm not a mathematician but I am pretty sure that 5 comes after 4 and 6 comes after 5.

Quote:

Originally Posted by island hermit

The Android camp keeps throwing everything they've got at the 4S and they still can't bump it off its perch. Hell, they can't even bump the 4 off its perch.

So, what's going to happen in 2012 when the totally redesigned v6 iPhone goes on sale and the 4S and 4 get bumped down into the $99 and $49 (or less) price points. I'll guarantee an average of 30 million iPhones per quarter over 4 quarters for Apple while Samsung hits a wall.

So keep throwing those specs out there guys... it won't mean a damn thing a year from now. Actually, anyone with any sense can see it doesn't mean a damn thing now.